Leaders who ruined Africa

Not long ago, my son, Olatunde (O-
T) drew my attention to a TED show
captioned: “The leaders who
ruined Africa, and the generation
who can fix it.” In sending the link
to me, O-T was speaking both to me
and to himself — to our
generations — he being just as
passionate about how to fix
Nigeria, nay Africa, as I am doleful
about being part of the generation
that ruined it.
A little about TED: TED is an
intellectual lecture series devoted
to spreading ideas, usually in the
form of short, powerful talks (18
minutes or less). The talk is
presented to a live audience in a
theatre setting and offered on its
blog: TED.com. The blog carries the
banner: “Ideas worth spreading —
And maybe even, ahem, acting on.”
Based in New York, USA, TED
“believe passionately in the power
of ideas to change attitudes, lives
and ultimately, the world.”
In this season of us scrambling to
find new leaders for all strata of our
democracy who would direct our
affairs come 2015, my mind went to
the passionate and captivating
lecture given by entrepreneur Fred
Swaniker in October 2014. Fred is a
Ghanaian-African who, before
hitting 18, had lived in Ghana, the
Gambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
What he learned from a childhood
across Africa was that while good
leaders can’t make much of a
difference in societies with strong
institutions, in countries with weak
structures, leaders could make or
break a country. Here are excerpts
from the talk:
“I experienced my first coup d’état
at the age of four. Because of the
coup d’état, my family had to leave
my native home of Ghana and move
to the Gambia. As luck would have
it, six months after we arrived, they
too had a military coup. I vividly
remember being woken up in the
middle of the night and gathering
the few belongings we could and
walking for about two hours to a
safe house. For a week, we slept
under our beds because we were
worried that bullets might fly
through the window.
“Then, at the age of eight, we
moved to Botswana. This time, it
was different. There were no coups.
Everything worked. Great
education. They had such good
infrastructure that even at the time
they had a fibre-optic telephone
system, long before it had reached
Western countries.
“The only thing they didn’t have is
that they didn’t have their own
national television station, and so I
remember watching TV from
neighbouring South Africa, and
watching Nelson Mandela in jail
being offered a chance to come out
if he would give up the apartheid
struggle. But he didn’t. He refused
to do that until he actually
achieved his objective of freeing
South Africa from apartheid. And I
remember feeling how just one
good leader could make such a big
difference in Africa.
“Then at the age of 12, my family
sent me to high school in
Zimbabwe. Initially, this too was
amazing: growing economy,
excellent infrastructure, and it
seemed like it was a model for
economic development in Africa. I
graduated from high school in
Zimbabwe and I went off to college.
“Six years later, I returned to the
country. Everything was different. It
had shattered into pieces. Millions
of people had emigrated, the
economy was in a shambles, and it
seemed all of a sudden that 30
years of development had been
wiped out. How could a country go
so bad so fast? Most people would
agree that it’s all because of
leadership. One man, President
Robert Mugabe, is almost single-
handedly responsible for having
destroyed this country.
“Now, all these experiences of
living in different parts of Africa
growing up did two things to me.
The first is it made me fall in love
with Africa. Everywhere I went, I
experienced the wonderful beauty
of our continent and saw the
resilience and the spirit of our
people, and at the time, I realised
that I wanted to dedicate the rest
of my life to making this continent
great. But I also realised that
making Africa great would require
addressing this issue of leadership.
You see, all these countries I lived
in, the coups d’état and the
corruption I’d seen in Ghana and
the Gambia and in Zimbabwe,
contrasted with the wonderful
examples I had seen in Botswana
and in South Africa of good
leadership. It made me realise that
Africa would rise or fall because of
the quality of our leaders.
“Now, one might think, of course,
leadership matters everywhere.
But if there’s one thing you take
away from my talk today, it is this:
In Africa, more than anywhere else
in the world, the difference that
just one good leader can make is
much greater than anywhere else,
and here’s why. It’s because in
Africa, we have weak institutions,
like the judiciary, the constitution,
civil society and so forth. So here’s
a general rule of thumb that I
believe in: When societies have
strong institutions, the difference
that one good leader can make is
limited, but when you have weak
institutions, then just one good
leader can make or break that
country.
“Let me make it a bit more
concrete. You become the
president of the United States. You
think, ‘Wow, I’ve arrived. I’m the
most powerful man in the world.’
So you decide, perhaps let me pass
a law. All of a sudden, Congress taps
you on the shoulder and says, ‘No,
no, no, no, no, you can’t do that.’
You say, ‘Let me try this way.’ The
Senate comes and says, ‘Uh-uh, we
don’t think you can do that.’ You
say, perhaps, ‘Let me print some
money. I think the economy needs
a stimulus.’ The central bank
governor will think you’re crazy.
You might get impeached for that.
But if you become the president of
Zimbabwe, and you say, ‘You know,
I really like this job. I think I’d like
to stay in it forever.’ (Laughter)
Well, you just can. You decide you
want to print money. You call the
central bank governor and you say,
‘Please double the money supply.’
He’ll say, ‘Okay, yes, sir, is there
anything else I can do for you?’ This
is the power that African leaders
have, and this is why they make the
most difference on the continent.
“The good news is that the quality
of leadership in Africa has been
improving. We’ve had three
generations of leaders, in my mind.
Generation one, are those who
appeared in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
These are people like Kwame
Nkrumah of Ghana and Julius
Nyerere of Tanzania. The legacy
they left is that they brought
independence to Africa. They freed
us from colonialism, and let’s give
them credit for that. They were
followed by generation two. These
are people that brought nothing
but havoc to Africa. Think warfare,
corruption, human rights abuses.
This is the stereotype of the typical
African leader that we typically
think of: Mobutu Sese Seko from
Zaire, Sani Abacha from Nigeria.
“The good news is that most of
these leaders have moved on, and
they were replaced by generation
three. These are people like the
late Nelson Mandela and most of
the leaders that we see in Africa
today, like Paul Kagame and so
forth. Now these leaders are by no
means perfect, but the one thing
they have done is that they have
cleaned up much of the mess of
generation two. They’ve stopped
the fighting, and I call them the
stabiliser generation. They’re much
more accountable to their people,
they’ve improved macroeconomic
policies, and we are seeing for the
first time Africa’s growing, and in
fact it’s the second fastest growing
economic region in the world. So
these leaders are by no means
perfect, but they are by and large
the best leaders we’ve seen in the
last 50 years. (TF’s caveat: how I
wish leaders in Nigeria, with the
exception of a few like Fashola of
Lagos, Aregbesola of Osun, Amaechi
of Rivers, Oshiomhole of Edo, could
be counted amongst.)
“So where to from here? I believe
that the next generation to come
after this, generation four, has a
unique opportunity to transform
the continent…” by creating
prosperity for a continent whose
population is forecast to have by
2030 a larger workforce than China!
Fred’s action plan to raise this
desired generation of African
leaders is to create homegrown
African institutions that will identify
and develop these leaders in a
systematic, practical way —
something Fred’s African
Leadership Academy has been
doing for the last 10 years.
He ended the lecture on a positive
note: “Nelson Mandela once said,
‘Every now and then, a generation
is called upon to be great. You can
be that great generation.’
Nigerians, vote wisely!